On November 24, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, a test to determine if an asteroid that might pose an impact risk to Earth could be redirected before it comes close to hitting us. However, the DART probe won’t be gathering data for scientists on Earth toread more
Hot on the heels of a recent development in South Africa in the search for clues supporting the Younger Dryas impact hypothesis, more evidence that a major asteroid impact occurred nearly 13 millennia ago has been unearthed in South Carolina. Studying core samples taken from White Pond, near Elgin, SC,read more
Another sizable asteroid has made a close pass to Earth on May 15, making 2010 WC9 the 35th object to pass within one lunar distance in 2018 alone, and the 17th to have passed within one-half of the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Thankfully, this object wasn’t big enough–or traveling fast enough for that matter–to cause any major damage to the Earth if it had actually hit us. But what is up with the increased number of asteroids making close passes to our little blue home?
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A new asteroid was discovered by the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission in November of 2016, designated 2016 WF9. While the mission finally decided to designate the object as an asteroid a few days later, 2016 WF9 presented an interesting puzzle: while it appears to be a comet in structure, it also lacks the dust and gas cloud that is characteristic of what we expect from comets.
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